The Widow (3 page)

—P
AUL
T
HEROUX

A
MAN WALKING
. One man, on a stretch of road three miles long cut slantwise every ten yards by the shadow of a tree trunk, striding unhurriedly from one shadow to the next. As it was almost noon, with the sun nearly at its highest point, a short, ridiculously squat shadow—his own—slid in front of him.

The dead-straight road climbed to the top of a long slope, where it seemed to stop short. To the left there were crackling sounds in the wood. To the right, in the fields swelling like breasts, there was nothing but a horse a long way off, a horse drawing a cask mounted on wheels; and in the same field a scarecrow which might perhaps be a man.

At that moment the red bus was leaving St. Amand, where it was market day, forcing its way with blasts of the horn. At last it left the endless street of white houses and started along the two rows of roadside elms. It picked up one more woman, waiting with her umbrella up because of the sun. There was no room to sit. The woman did not think of setting down her baskets, but stood swaying between the seats, and staring like a sick hen.

“It was Jeanine—she was in the next box—who told me, and she even was disgusted … And when Jeanine's disgusted! …”

The driver sat impassively, wearing his official cap and his mauve tie rather askew, looking straight ahead at the dark lines striped across the road. No smoking. The sign was up. The cigarette stuck to his lip was out.

“I know….” he uttered in the tone of one who knows what he is talking about.

And the big girl who, fifteen minutes before the bus was to leave had settled herself in the seat next to the driver, went on, punctuating her whispered story with giggles, “There was Léon, the hairdresser…. And Lolotte … And a boy from Montluçon who works at the airplane factory…. Then there was Rose….”

“Which Rose?”

“You must know her. You meet her every day on the road, on a bicycle. She's the daughter of the butcher at Tilly. A fat girl with scarlet cheeks and eyes popping out of her head who wears her dresses too short. She goes to St. Amand to learn shorthand and typing…. A real bitch!”

Ducks and chickens were stirring in their baskets. Forty women, perhaps more, all dressed in black, were squashed into the seats, and most of them sat silent and staring, their heads, along with the motion of the bus, swayed from left to right while every now and then all their bosoms lunged forward.

Ten, nine, eight miles farther along the man was still walking on, like someone going nowhere in particular with nothing particular in mind. No luggage, no packages, no walking stick, not even a switch cut from the hedge. His arms swung freely.

“Léon began with Lolotte, and she was laughing so loud that the people in the movie kept telling them to be quiet.”

The big red bus was drawing nearer. A gray car overtook it. Not local people. They came from far, and they had far to go. The car was traveling fast. It started up the slope. The walking man heard its approach without slackening his pace; he merely turned his head a little and raised one arm, with no great hope of success.

The car did not stop. The woman beside the driver asked, “What did he want?”

Turning around, she saw a tall silhouette still moving from the shadow of one tree trunk to the shadow of the next, then almost at once the car was over the top and going down the slope on the other side.

The bus followed, rumbling in low gear. It vibrated more than ever. The widow Couderc, behind the driver, kept glancing anxiously upward, as the packages on top of the bus could be heard rattling about.

The man on the road raised his arm once again. The bus pulled up just by him. The driver, keeping his seat, opened the door with a familiar movement.

“Where to?”

The man looked around him and mumbled, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, “I don't mind. Where are you heading for?”

“Montluçon …”

“That'll do.”

“Montluçon? Eight francs …”

The bus started off again. Standing inside, the man hunted through his pockets, fetching out a five-franc piece, then a two-franc bit, and finally, after searching his other pockets without any particular anxiety, found another fifty centimes.

“Here's seven francs fifty. I'll get out a bit before Montluçon.”

The old wives on their way back from market looked at him. The widow Couderc looked at him, but not in the same way as the rest of them. The girl sitting by the driver looked at him too: she had never met a man like this before.

The bus was laboring up the last of the slope. Little puffs of cool air came in through the open windows. The widow Couderc had a lock of hair hanging over her brow, her bun was on the point of falling down and her pink slip—a queer bluish pink—showed under the hem of her dress.

There was a sound of bells, but the church could not be seen. It must be midday. A house loomed at the side of the road, and a woman got out of the bus opposite the doorstep where two children sat.

It was odd: there were forty passengers, and only one of them, the widow Couderc, looked at the man any differently from the way you would look at just anybody. The rest were placid and quiet, like cows in a meadow watching a wolf browsing in their midst without the least astonishment.

And yet he was a man such as they had never seen in this bus which took them to market each Saturday. The widow Couderc had sensed this at the very first glance. She had seen him thumb the car before he stopped the bus. She had noticed that he was empty-handed; and you just don't walk empty-handed along the main road without so much as knowing where you're going.

She was not forgetting to keep a lookout for the antics of the packages on the roof, but all the same she did not take her eyes off him, and she took note of everything—his stubbly cheeks, his pale, unseeing eyes, his gray suit, worn yet having a touch of ease about it, his thin shoes. A man who could walk noiselessly and spring like a cat. And who, after the seven francs fifty he had given to the driver in exchange for a blue ticket, probably had no money left in his pockets.

He was watching her, too, screwing up his eyes as if to see her better, and from time to time he pursed up his lips as though smiling to himself. Perhaps he was amused at widow Couderc's wen. Everyone called it “the wen.” It was on her left cheek, a spot the size of a five-franc piece, a spot covered with hundreds of brown, silky hairs, as if a piece of animal's hide, a marten say, had been grafted there.

The bus was now going down the other slope, and behind the trees there were occasional glimpses of the river Cher, its lively water leaping over the stones.

Widow Couderc too hugged a secret smile. The man blinked slightly. It was rather as if, in the midst of all these old women with their nodding heads, the two had recognized each other.

She almost forgot that she had reached her stop. She realized suddenly that they were at the foot of the hill. She leaned forward, tapped the driver on the back, and he braked.

“Have to give me a hand with my incubator!” she said.

She was short and broad, rather plump. It was quite a business getting out of the bus with all her baskets: at one moment she wanted to get out first herself, the next she wanted to put her baskets down on the road first.

The driver jumped down. The thirty or forty women in the bus watched her without a word. There was a little house not far off, a tiny two-roomed house with a blue-painted fence around it.

“Mind you don't break anything. Those things can't take much handling!”

The driver had climbed up the iron ladder at the back and onto the roof of the bus and now he lowered a kind of enormous box with four feet. The widow Couderc took it and set it very cautiously at the side of the road.

She took a two-franc piece out of a full purse, and handed it to him. “There, young man …”

But it was the man they had picked up from the road that she eyed, with a shade of regret.

The bus started off again. Through the rear window the man could see the widow Couderc standing at the roadside, beside her enormous box and her baskets.

“Just like her niece,” said the big girl next to the driver. “Do you know Félicie? …”

The man could have sat down now that there was a seat empty. He kept standing. The road curved. Widow Couderc and the little house disappeared…. Then he too leaned forward and tapped the driver's shoulder.

“Drop me here, will you?”

When the bus moved on, all heads turned to watch him making off in the opposite direction, and the girl confided her impression to the driver: “Queer fish!”

He was already farther along than he had thought. It took him several minutes before he saw the little house once more, the packages at the roadside and widow Couderc, who had opened the gate and was knocking at the door.

She was not surprised to see him coming. She moved toward the gate as he came to a halt.

“I thought the Bichat woman would be at home and would lend me her wheelbarrow!” she said. “And now look, everything's shut.”

All the same, she called out in a shrill voice, turning different ways, “Clémence! … Clémence! …”

Then: “I wonder where she can be. She never goes out. She must have had bad news about her sister….”

She walked around the house, banged on another closed door.

“If only I could find her wheelbarrow!”

But there was nothing but the vegetable patch and a few flowers. No wheelbarrow. A turtledove in a cage.

“Do you live far from here?” asked the man.

“Less than half a mile, by the canal. I was counting on Clémence's wheelbarrow….”

“Would you like me to give you a hand?”

She did not refuse. She had been expecting it.

“Do you think you'll be able to carry the incubator all by yourself? You'll have to be careful: it breaks easily.”

And all the time she was darting little glances at him, curious, but already satisfied.

“It's a bargain. I saw it in front of the hardware store, just as I got to market. I offered him two hundred francs. It wasn't until I was getting right into the bus that he let me have it for three hundred. It's not too heavy?”

It was unwieldy, but not heavy. Things shifted inside the box.

“Look out—there's a lamp….”

She followed, carrying her baskets. They turned into a side road, edged with hazels and filled with soft shade: the ground underfoot was yielding, as in a wood.

Drops of sweat stood out on the man's brow.

“Looking for work?” she said, hurrying to catch up with him, for he walked quickly.

He made no answer. His shirt was beginning to stick to his body. His hands were so damp he was afraid he might lose his hold.

“Wait while I go and open the door….”

The door was already open, leading to a rather large kitchen. Coming in from outside, they could not at first see anything in the dim light.

“Put that down here. Soon we'll …”

A ginger cat rubbed against her legs. She put down her baskets on a pine table. Then she opened a second door, and the flood of sunshine from the garden invaded the room. As she passed, the man caught the whiff of her armpits.

“Sit down a moment. I'm going to get you a glass of wine.”

What was wrong? She was uneasy, like an animal returning to its burrow and winding a strange scent. What made her notice some grease on the table top? It was scarcely visible. She looked up at the two hams hanging from a beam, and suddenly her eyes flared with anger.

“Wait! … Stay there….”

She rushed into the garden, which looked like a farmyard, with a heap of manure, a cart propped on its shafts, chickens, geese, ducks.

Standing at the door, he watched her as she went. She walked like a woman who knows where she is going. He noticed someone else walking ahead of her, as though trying to get away, a young, thin girl, perhaps sixteen years old, with a baby on her arm.

The girl was making her way toward a gate beyond which was a hint of a canal and a drawbridge. She quickened her step. Widow Couderc walked faster. She caught up with the girl, and could be seen, but not heard, speaking vehemently, angrily.

The girl held the baby with one hand. The other was hidden beneath her blue-checked smock.

This was the hand which the widow dragged out, and from it she snatched a little package wrapped in a scrap of newspaper.

What sort of things would she be shouting at the fleeing girl? Insults, of course! And she slammed the gate shut. She came back with the parcel in her hand. She opened a door, the door of some shed out of which she pushed an old man who walked in front of her with dragging feet and lowered head.

“The bitch!” she exclaimed, coming back into the kitchen and dumping on the table two thick slices of ham that had been in the piece of newspaper.

“She took advantage of my being away again to come and see her grandfather and pinch some of my ham! You can't understand…. She's a little slut, that's what she is! Sixteen years old and got herself a baby already.”

She glanced harshly at the old man, who was still standing there in the kitchen looking at nothing.

“And this old fool would give her everything there is in the house.”

The old fool didn't move, just stared curiously at the box standing in the middle of the kitchen, part of it wrapped in brown paper.

“He's not proud, he isn't! He knows he'll pay for it! Look at the face he's pulling….”

She opened a brown-painted cupboard, took out two glasses, showed them to the old man, and pushed a jug into his hand.

“He's deaf as a post. He can't even speak any more, not since he fell out of a hay wagon. An old piece of junk, that's what he is…. But when it comes to certain things he knows well enough how to act the lamb with Tati.”

An excited flame had danced in her eyes and she looked the man over from head to foot.